Canadians honoured for their roles in Haiti (with video)

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MONTREAL — Saturday will mark the third, grim anniversary since an earthquake in Haiti killed 200,000 people and made unwitting heroes of at least 14 Canadian police and military officers who scrambled to pull survivors from the rubble in the hours that followed.

At a ceremony Thursday to honour those 14 officers for their bravery — including five from the Montreal police — some of the men said the memory of the devastation and sorrow was still too painful to discuss.

On January 12, 2010, Montreal police Sgt. Denis Roy jumped from the second-floor balcony of a restaurant in Port-au-Prince before the building collapsed, then headed to what was left of the hospital, where he pulled a teenager to safety. Roy volunteered in the days that followed to search for and rescue more survivors.

Asked to speak about his experience, he pointed instead to the tattoo which now covers his left arm, with the date of the earthquake wrapped around his wrist and a dragon, symbolizing the earthquake, leading up to his shoulder.

“The flames represent all the people close to me who died there,” he said.

Among the other recipients decorated at RCMP headquarters in Montreal were also officers from the Sûreté du Québec, the RCMP and the Ottawa police — who returned into collapsing buildings, dug out holes and moved mountains of concrete to rescue as many people as possible.

International Co-operation Minister Julian Fantino, who has been under fire in the past week for saying he would freeze any new aid to Haiti, pending a review of how the money is spent, was among the dignitaries in attendance, along with RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson. Fantino would not take any questions, but commended the officers for their “incredible bravery and selflessness” in Haiti under volatile and dangerous conditions.

Saguenay Police Constable Bertrand Fraser had been in Haiti for an hour and a half when the walls started shaking all around him.

“In the first minute after the earthquake you could hear a fly buzzing,” recalled Fraser, who had just returned from holiday in the Dominican Republic when the quake hit. “Then after that came the screams. It was hell. Just hell.”

With a colleague from the RCMP, Fraser went straight to the house across the street, which had fallen on top of a mother and her two children, a 7-year-old and a newborn baby.

“We heard them calling out, crying, screaming. It was terrible,” Fraser said. “The ceiling caved in on them and we managed to move some rocks around and get the baby out through a hole no bigger than a groundhog’s hole. We got the mother and the other child out several hours later. We had to lift the whole ceiling off them.”

It wasn’t until after midnight, about seven hours later, that Fraser “finished his shift,” he said.

“We couldn’t see anything, there were no vehicles, no phones, no lights, and nothing was working.”

Fraser hasn’t seen or heard from the mother and her children since, but says he thinks of them often.

“We’ve had time to forget, but it’s still emotional. The camaraderie and human contact with people we didn’t even know ... it’s hard to explain.”

Montreal police Sergeant Claude Cuillerier hasn’t been back to Haiti or been in contact with the people he saved either.

He promised his family he wouldn’t go back, he said.

“They survived the earthquake from a distance,” he explained. “They knew where I was, but I couldn’t reach them for several hours.”

Cuillerier was at United Nations Police (UNPol) headquarters in Port-au-Prince when the earthquake struck. He was in an office on the second floor of the building when the first floor collapsed.

“The first thing I thought about when the quake stopped was to go downstairs,” Cuillerier said. “I hadn’t realized I was already downstairs ... That’s where we found most of the people who survived, as well as many who didn’t.”

He compared the scene to 9/11 in New York, with great clouds of white dust rising from the collapse of so much concrete.

“When we got out of the cloud, we saw people stuck under the debris, but there was no way for them to get out because the holes weren’t big enough,” Cuillerier said. “Then with adrenalin and the sweat on our brows we managed to break some of the concrete and get some people out.”

The 13 police officers and one member of the Canadian Forces honoured Thursday were all in Haiti to participate in International Police Peace Operations to train police abroad, patrol streets and provide humanitarian assistance, among other roles.

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